This contains the interviews with a wide range of creatives complied between 2014 – 2017 including ORLAN, Barry Fantoni, Zandra Rhodes, Tim Nordwind, Mr Bingo, Erik Kessels, Peter Saville, Ian Anderson, Tim Pope, Bob & Roberta Smith, Gee Vaucher, Mike Perry, Julie Verhoven, Ken Garland and Doug Abraham…
Nonconformity
Aren’t we all a little odd? For nonconformity to exist we’re saying that there’s a conformity, a uniform, a code that’s in place. By wilfully not conforming we’ve eschewed protocol, jumped a red light and ignored convention. We might well create our own protocols, put a new traffic system in place and hold a convention for other like-minded rebels to celebrate the new (non)conformity. This is often what we call progress.
Rebellion on masse accentuates conformity, gives the status-quo definition and clarity. Rebellion is the mental and often physical manifestation of the alienation that we feel. But this book isn’t necessarily about us on masse, we’re looking at us as individuals.
When we talk about creativity and nonconformity, in the context of this book, we’re talking about auteurs, accidental anarchists and those that refuse both to be boring and to be bored by others. This is about the eccentricity that pulses through our veins.
Paradoxically, the fact that we feel isolated and dislocated in some way from society is what unites us. We can move on. Nonconformity isn’t limited to political or cultural agitators. Nonconformity can be nuanced: A flourish or a finesse. Eccentricity is arguably, an exaggerated performance of ‘normal’. Normality is a dulled and muted perception of life. Normality borders on the non-existent, eccentricity surrounds us.
Let’s not confuse this refusal of normal with an entire rebuttal of shared values and ethics, of education and learning, of standards in skills and democratic agreement on elements of life that prevent us from harming others. We could argue a case for that, but, again, this isn’t the place for such. Creating a framework, boundaries and limits are liberating: Rebellion is also a considered system.
Back to eccentricity. What has nonconformity ever done for creativity? If we swap the question round we can see that creativity, a tool of expression, is instrumental in voicing the nonconformist self.
Do you have to be a nonconformist in order to be creative? No. But to communicate something of value to society takes an element of nonconformity.
What happens if you think you’re boring and are about as eccentric as a clothes peg? The real bores in life are those that consider themselves as eccentric. Eccentricity is what others see in you, not what you see in yourself. I just had to look up what clothes peg was in American, the answer is clothespin. I find that an eccentric choice of word. Is it because we find the exotic and the previously unknown eccentric?
Can you be eccentric without being creative? Yes, and no. We making creative decisions all the time. We’ve already defined creativity for the purpose of this investigation, subconscious decisions versus wider accumulation of value for society. We may have eccentric habits, see above for the low-down on that. We may collect, hoard or festoon. We may use inappropriate tools for the job-at-hand, these are idiosyncrasies. Creativity agitates normality into another state.
Readjust the interior of your Honda Accord with the addition of gold leaf, dial adjusted warm leatherette and squirrel motifs, you’re being creative. Give up your day job to DJ ragtime at a foot spa, you’re being creative. Make snow globes out of traffic bollards, record the sound of snails embracing, carve the silhouettes of sparrows into palm trees whilst dressed as Fred Astaire, it’s all good.
Our personal journey through life is enriched by our creativity, our lives are also enriched by others creativity. Do we believe that we’re born alone and will die alone? If so, then creativity can help fix that. Our creativity is social, it feeds and excretes love. Our nonconformity is a tool to unleash our souls.
Talking about nonconformity to contributors to this book was extremely difficult. Most people tend to be largely unaware of their own peccadillos, and who am I to call them out? If they are hitherto unaware, then the natural reaction tends to be one of defence. Why are we raising the uncomfortable truth that they are different to others? To be different is to mark you out from the herd. But as we know, society favours and celebrates the creative difference we make. Society is our friend, we are society.
Conversely, we don’t want to look like we’re celebrating or boasting about being different for fear of disassociating ourselves from our audience. Creativity is a delicate balance between the magic of the creative soul and the dissemination of structured craft, which is why the emotive and discordant resonates in art. We are instruments. Drawing attention to our attention to this fact endangers us to becoming wizards in our own version of Oz.
Proclamation of our stunning creative prowess is the last vestige of the zany and the whacky. ‘I’m mad I am’ invariably brings the response ‘No you’re not.’ And whilst we at it, let’s not use serious mental health issues as a shorthand for creative sensibilities. Our mental welfare, our ability to understand, compute and regulate the external and internal pressure systems of the world, are again, beyond the scope of this book. As I’ve stated, I’m no doctor and I struggle to comprehend my own mind. Be mindful of the mind.
Let’s celebrate nonconformity and observe the nonconformist stance. Zandra Rhodes was, rather sweetly, taken aback when I offered up the suggestion that she was an iconic nonconformist. Barry Fantoni pointed me to some excellent outsider art or ‘Art Brut’ including Adolf Wolfi and Augustin Lesage, a miner’s son from Saint-Pierre-les-Auchel who painted during the first half of the 20th Century. Sometimes isn’t it better to just get on and ‘do it’? Arguably, yes, and this point of view could be given at every stage of our creative journey, but I think it’s also important to celebrate from time to time. It’s time to hold up a mirror to our creative selves and see what we can lear
In this chapter, we hear from ORLAN, Barry Fantoni, Zandra Rhodes, Tim Nordwind, Mr Bingo, Erik Kessels, Peter Saville, Ian Anderson, [G15] Bob & Roberta Smith, Gee Vaucher, Mike Perry, Julie Verhoven, Ken Garland and Doug Abraham, talking about family, the inner voice of nonconformity and education.
Here are some thoughts to get us started:
· It’s our job to be unexpected
· You have a choice: Authenticity or auto-pilot
· The most compelling creative work is that which has a fundamental truth to it
· You don’t need any validation from anyone to do what you want to do
· Our future growth depends on our bravery to honestly confront boundaries imposed upon us
· Don’t be boring. Nonconformity isn’t a problem, it’s an asset.
· It’s OK to be an outsider. You are not worthless simply because you are different
Non-conformity is power and anger at injustice is a very good place to start. ORLAN:
‘As a teenager I was highly criticized by the adult world surrounding me. I was truly furious to realize that as a woman, I could not do the same things as men. To give birth to me seemed to be an anachronism issue in an overpopulated and over polluted world. Contraception did not exist then, nor did abortion and without this, we could not be free. I created works at that time with the bed sheets from my trousseau which my mother asked me to embroider. I got the sheets stained with my lovers’ sperm, I indicated the stains with paint and then embroidered these in my performances where I used a seamstress’ large needle with a black thread. I would embroider the stains without looking at the work, I would either look at the public or be blindfolded.’
The Eternal Internal Struggle
‘At the time when you’d think I should be at my happiest, I felt a little lost.’ Tim Nordwind
Why do we bother? Is creativity some sort of magic? We appear to be under a spell.
The urge to write, draw, make noise, may intrinsic to humanity, but it’s no easy task. ‘Who are these young punks?’ No terms of endearment here, before The Ramones to be called a ‘punk’ was to be called worthless.
Let’s unwrap this Punk ethos.
Whilst working at Croydon School of Art in South London, Barry Fantoni taught Malcolm McLaren and graphic designer Jamie Reid, the designer for the Sex Pistols album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols and the singles Anarchy in the UK and God Save The Queen. Fantoni, who recalls that Reid was brilliant whilst McLaren was ‘unteachable’, cites the impact of outsider art as vital to understanding how creativity works. We spend a huge amount of time and resources on a fraction of what’s really out there. Art isn’t just what we see in The Tate Gallery or MoMa, creativity is all around us. Is Barry a true punk in the way that we’ve come to understand – uninhibited and free? His views on creativity could well have rubbed off on the young McLaren and Reid, his view on what creativity and individuality read like a Punk manifesto (if such a thing wasn’t so totally ‘un-Punk’)
“Creativity is natural: Human, it’s part of the kit. Creativity is part of the survival kit. We need to breathe, we need to reproduce, we need to keep warm but unless we understand who we are, all of our existence on this planet is completely pointless because we won’t have known who we were. All we’ll have known is that we were living here for a while, living the lives of other people.”
Barry waxes lyrical about the importance of art and the need for us all to express ourselves…
‘If the creativity is that voice inside you. I’ve heard people say this to me many times, ‘if I was only a painter’, ‘if I could only paint’, ‘I’d love to paint’ they ARE painters, they were just told they weren’t. The outsider doesn’t think like that, they think ‘that’s a lovely landscape, I’ll paint that’ doesn’t matter if it works out or not, or the wrong colours, they are obeying the internal demand’
Don’t think you’re not, or can’t be creative. Creativity is not a members-only club.
Gee Vaucher spent the 1970’s in a band with her husband the poet, philosopher, painter, musician and activist Penny Rimbaud. Their home in Essex, in the UK, became the focal drop in place for bohemian activism. Vaucher reminds us of our duty to the next generation:
‘I think children need to understand that they have a voice, they have a right, they have a lot of power and they have a lot of really brilliant sensible things to say. That’s only coming to the fore now; that Victorian ‘seen and not heard’ bullshit, that is changing gradually.’
The sense of marginalisation or sense of powerlessness can have a profoundly adverse effect, has Vaucher ever felt marginalised by society?
‘Me? No. I’ve always been an outsider even at school, never felt marginalised because I was very confident in myself. I think you can feel very marginalised and lose confidence and feel alone and feel, ‘what’s the point?’ And all that stuff, but being marginalised isn’t just that, I felt like an outsider, I felt very different, I suppose I’ve always known what I wanted to do, I never gave up painting and drawing and that’s what my means of expression was from the word go, so I never lost contact with that.’
This sense of ‘feeling different’ is something that the designer Kate Moross ponders when she speaks about advice that she offers to students…
‘There’s a perception or a fear, that if you aren’t like everyone else then you’ll find it more difficult, and that’s something I always try and tell people: Difference is your unique selling point, it’s what makes you not like the average cliché of what a graphic designer is, that’s what you should sell yourself on, not the average, I think people like that I’m different – I’m not doing it to be different, it’s just who I am, but I do think it’s important to clients. I think they like that I’m open with them about processes, that I’m honest, that I don’t have an agenda, it’s not my way or the highway, I’m fair, I compromise.’
This sense of wanting to be ‘who you are’ surfaces, along with other painful pustules, in our teenage years. Our teenage years help to define us, shaped in part by rebellion, rejection and isolation and it’s our families that bear the brunt of this transition.
We Are Family
‘Creativity is a substitute for finding a boundary or a framework in order not to go crazy…Of course.’
Erik Kessels
It must be fairly daunting for some of us when our children first disclose their intended vocation in life is to spend it doodling, strumming or making tiny faces out of brie. The fear that junior will be destitute motivates some of us to offer alternative career advice in the hope that all of this creativity nonsense is ‘just a phase’.
This advice is often based on misplaced fear, the world is a harsh place, yes, it’s tough to make a living, but it’s worth remembering that our parent’s motivations are honourable: They want to protect us from the world. Unfortunately for them, creativity is not ‘a phase’ and if it is quashed at an early stage it will only resurface in a mutated fashion. The only crime you can commit with creativity, as with anything in life, is not to fulfil your dreams and ambitions.
Tim Nordwind recalls his relationship with his father as being a war of attrition:
‘My father was supportive but critical, it’s probably the best way to say it. He had no experience in the field, he was an attorney, an entertainer to him seemed so far -fetched in any way, he did buy me a bass, but he was critical. I remember we had just won a Grammy award for our video Here We Go Again, which is the one where we are dancing on treadmills and up until that moment he was asking me ’have you started thinking about what you are going to do now?’ I remember a week or two after we won that award, which he was very proud of, delighted in fact, he sent me an article in the New York Times about the decline of the recording industry and it might be time to start thinking about getting out of this! I was like ‘Aww God what do I have to do?’ When something good happened he was pleased, he was just an overly protective father – in some ways that gave me a lot to fight against. It’s very hard to make money in the music business, there was a lot of ‘I’m glad you’re doing it, I don’t know if you can do it’ I was probably going, ‘well I can’t do this but this character can, I can play this part I can play this character that’s a little bit larger than, at least, my life.’
What do we have to do to prove that we’ve made it! This may sound familiar to many of us, family can be the toughest critics but let’s not be too hard on our parents, they try to do their best, but the poet Philip Larkin made no bones about the influence that parents have on us, a little harshly perhaps ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had. And add some extra, just for you’.
Back to Tim Nordwind, how did his relationship with his father affect him?
‘I felt really lost at one point, I know it was around 30 years old, right after some good things had happened to the band and the videos had started taking off. I got home from that, form two and half years of really running around the world, with very little time to enjoy what was going on, by the time I got home I was so far past, we should have celebrated when they were happening, I remember getting home and thinking ‘what a crazy two and a half years, I’m not exactly sure what just happened’ and not feeling as happy as I thought I should feel, even though most of my teenage dreams had come true. I definitely went into a bit of a depression I think. At the time when you’d think I should be at my happiest, I felt a little lost. I feel ok talking about it now because it was a while ago, but I remember at the time thinking ‘I can’t tell anyone this, everyone will think I’m such an asshole’
Tim Nordwind is no asshole. That feeling of isolation is a very real sensation and reveals that no matter how things look to the outside world, no matter the level of success or achievement, depression can strike us at any moment. We must be careful here not to blame our parents, (Larkin was a bitter soul) for they do their best, but without their support things can get very tough when we do hit rock bottom. Our depression can feel like ammunition to beat us around the head with. ‘See I told you that being creative was a one-way ticket to hell’. Of course, to us in our depressed state, we might agree. But we’d be wrong. Communicating our fears, hopes, aspirations and ambitions keep us healthy.
Parents adopt a variety of techniques to keep us on track, Zandra Rhodes’s mother, herself an art teacher, took a different path.
“My mother was very influential in terms of being, she taught belief in one’s self and she was a very dominating woman, although she didn’t dominate, do you know what I mean? She made me always think that I did things of my own free will and it was probably a big influence. It’s important to strike a balance, to give people the freedom to believe that they are capable of doing something because so much of creativity is about risk-taking perhaps…Or having a belief perhaps to put pen to paper, without throwing it away. My mother was always this sort of woman who would be encouraging, she’d encourage me to do things and taught me belief in myself, I didn’t have her saying ‘why are you doing that?’[
But surely if we’re given enough rope we’ll all be swinging around town, whooping and hollering, the wildest of banshees? Not so with Zandra Rhodes:
“I was a very boring child. I wasn’t rebellious. I was encouraged all the time by my mother. When some people say ‘I rebelled against that or I didn’t like that’ I liked school, working at school I didn’t have a problem with any of that”
There blows another myth: That creativity is for dropouts. The idea that creativity cannot be academic in its approach is frankly absurd, a pernicious lie. Who started this rumour, what were their motivations? Our creative right brains versus logical left brains are given as the scientific root but I would argue that in order to create art of value and significance we need to apply lateral free thinking and execute in a logical manor. The methods we use for studying the arts all require deep philosophical thinking. When we rebel it is not always mindless vandalism of academia or cultural values, it’s simply to create, to work beyond the boundaries of convention in order to create boundaries afresh.
Is there a difference between rebelling and ‘doing your own thing? Back to Zandra Rhodes:
‘Oh well, you can go on and do your own thing, I’m just trying to think, would you call it rebellion? I suppose you could call it that, but I never thought of myself as rebellious. I think of myself, compared with some people, when I say I was quite boring. I get on with my work, I try and hope I come up with something new but I don’t think of it as rebellion.’
Doing ‘your own thing’ takes confidence not just to create but to live from day to day, sometimes having a devil-may-care attitude can be extremely useful. Being able to twist a situation to our advantage, to think laterally, can protect us. Zandra Rhodes recalls a time that an old school friend got in touch with her to apologise for mocking her:
‘I’ve got my own look that I put together, and that gives me my confidence. I also think I was born with a thick skin. I was very lucky. Years ago, I can’t remember who wrote the letter, but this girl wrote to me saying’ Dear Zandra, I was at school with you and I used to travel with you on the bus, and I’m sorry that we always laughed at you.’ I didn’t know that at the time, but, if you are lucky enough and they are staring at you…’
That’s the spirit: If you live with the fires of creativity, make use of the smoke and smoke some proverbial kippers for breakfast whilst you’re at it. Resistance is futile as Mr Bingo points out. In the end, those we love will just have to give in:
There are lots of things I could say about my parents: They are quite happy with who I am now. I’m very different to the rest of my family, and I think there were points where they maybe saw me as a bit of a weirdo and a bit of an outsider and I think now they’ve recently just accepted me for who I am. And they think, ‘he may never have kids, he may never get married again, and he just does this art stuff and that’s fine.’
For Erik Kessels the route to creativity was a form of therapy, self-expression in order to construct a new world:
‘I think when you set out with the idea of being a non-conformist, then you will never be one. I mean, for me it had more to do that when I was 11 years old my sister died, she was 9, from then I was the only child. My sister died in a car accident, somebody drove through a red light whilst she was crossing the street. For the next five or six years, my parents were really in grief over it and I had to be very independent. I pushed myself into creativity. It wasn’t like I had a huge talent for it, because I saw a lot of people around me that were better, I just put all my energy at that time into drawing.’
The construction of a new world requires a framework, Erik Kessels gathered around his interests, something that he still does as a curator. He’s keen to point out that ‘hobbies’ should not be scoffed at:
‘Creativity is a substitute for finding a boundary or a framework in order not to go crazy… Of course. I think that especially with creative people, the ones that need to do this work are the ones that would maybe kill somebody or would be very strange people if they didn’t. I need to have a certain framework, I work with my hobbies or interests, sometimes a little too keenly. It’s slightly autistic of course, there is also a good side to it, the downside is about isolation, but it’s also nice to develop your hobbies.’
Let’s turn this up to 11 and replace the word ‘hobbies’ with passions. However, Erik Kessels asks us to beware the cliché of troubled artist as the epitome of nonconformist glory:
‘The passion that you have? I think you should put that into the work. The most important thing is to be true to yourself, because that’s a constant fight. Sometimes there’s a lot of trouble and irritation, but I like to sleep well at night, also that’s what a lot of people forget – you need to be very fit. The best creatives in any field are people that feel very good, they have a great relationship with their partner and they don’t have a lot of frustrations. When you feel very safe and happy then you come up with the craziest ideas. Being in a constant crisis and feeling bad is not the time when you come up with the best ideas.’
Feeling Out Nonconformity
‘There are those people in life who, if they are honest, in the back of their minds, see their whole life as a bit of a performance…’ Ian Anderson
hat other motivation and ambition do young creative spirits have when they are starting out? For Peter Saville, growing up in a fairly well-off suburb of Manchester, there wasn’t a lot of creative stimuli to be found. The young Peter found television to be his portal to another world and got caught up in the idea of lifestyle, fashion and interestingly, diplomacy. Peter Saville:
‘I remember one day when I was quite young, aged between 8 and 12, I heard the word ‘diplomat’, or read the word, and I remember asking my father what a diplomat was and he told me. I remember thinking ‘oh I quite like that, that’s James Bond without being shot, without the guns’ so that’s a little bit of a measure, it was the romantic aspect of it, that you got to go to foreign places, preferably exotic foreign places, and be in the milieu of those places, there was something about that quite appealed to me, of course, I’d be brought up on Bond movies and The Avengers and I think they shaped the parameters for quite a lot of people in my generation. The only place where I saw anything different, challenging, avant-garde, progressive and occasionally sexy was on record covers. I was also very aware of fashion, I’d dragged my parents to Carnaby Street in the late 60’s to be part of that, and I suppose I saw the convergent sensibilities that the 60’s threw up, where music, film, fashion, furniture, way of living, there was a coherence, definitely of the more exotic dimensions of the 60’s .’
Another graphic designer, well known for his record cover artwork is Ian Anderson, Ian also nods to the idea of performance and drama of lifestyle in his answer to the idea of nonconformity. Ian Anderson:
‘There are those people in life who, if they are honest, in the back of their minds, see their whole life as a bit of a performance, you don’t have to look in the mirrored window as you walk down the street just to check that you are alright because you know you are. And if people think ‘that fucking fat ginger cunt’ it’s like ‘yeah, and? I could lose weight, what’s your problem?’ I think there is that sense of performance.’
Is nonconformity a personality trait? Is creativity obsessive? Ian didn’t study graphic design but sees himself as someone who is highly visually aware.
Ian Anderson:
‘Being a designer is an obtuse career path, if, like me, you didn’t decide to be one, if you ended up being one, and staying one. I think you can talk about the advantages and disadvantages of whether you studied and that’s a different question, but in terms of obsession I think that I am not really particularly obsessive by nature, in a way that a lot of designers are, a lot of really good designers are OCD because things have to be right, I don’t think I’m like that, to be honest, but I do like pushing myself to be obsessive. When I was a student living in bedsits, we had bookshelves and even before I had any idea of being a designer it would be important to me that books looked right on the shelves, so I’d find myself going to jumble sales and buying up Penguin classics, Sartre and Camus, and so the shelves look good, if there is a book that doesn’t look good you read it and throw it away, but I don’t think that’s obsession… ‘
The inspiration for nonconformity doesn’t have to stem from an interest in Sartre and Camus and peppered with James Bond poolside shenanigans in exotic locations. Martin Parr’s view of the world was shaped well within the confines of a suburbia that is as arguably absurd as any Ian Fleming novel. Parr offers out the escape as a reason to celebrate conformity as a measure with which to bend and break .
Martin Parr:
“I was brought up in Surrey which was a bland county, it helped inspire because everywhere else seemed more interesting, that’s why I took very warmly to being in Yorkshire later on. In the end, blandness probably helped me creatively, I can see the strength and worthiness in the bland”
Something could be said about beauty and the eye of the holder here, Parr’s idiosyncratic yet warm view of mundanity in all its ignoble glory is a lesson in sheer bloody mindfulness: In amplifying the world around you, you bring focus, clarity and often hilarity. Celebrating eccentricity validates its very existence.
The name Julie Verhoven often appears alongside the word ‘kooky’ in the press. Things may have been different, a ‘kooky’ secretary perhaps had it not been for a present from some well-meaning family friends:
‘My parents didn’t want me to struggle all my life so they suggested being a secretary, to learn to type, but there was nothing else I was interested in apart from fashion. I think they were nervous of me doing fashion because I’m a bit soft and they were worried that I was going to be shat on basically.’
What was Julie Verhoeven’s character like as a child?
‘I was shy, quiet and obviously people’s idea of the fashion industry is that it’s quite hard-core, which it is, it’s highly competitive, but equally I didn’t know what I wanted to do in fashion, I just wanted to be a part of it somehow.’
Perhaps Julie felt like she was compensating in some way for something by going into fashion?
‘I suppose, as tragic as it sounds, I loved the glamour and the allure, dressing up and becoming somebody that you are not, through clothes. I just found a lovely fantastical world to draw these women, and I wanted to be those women, I was obviously miles from that but I was really attracted.’
When was the first time that Julie Verhoeven saw the fashion world and thought ‘this is what I want to be?’
‘I remember my parents had friends that didn’t have children, when people don’t have children they give children presents that are a bit more advance because they don’t realise the age range, so they gave me a copy of French Vogue when I was eight years old. It was full of Helmut Newton photos of shoes, really provocative and extraordinary and I thought it was amazing, it had a real impact.’
It takes strength of character to overcome well-meant career advice from parents, thank goodness for rogue parent’s friends. Some of us find ourselves at a young age, but there’s no ticking clock, it’s about truth rather than about time.
An Ode to Sheer Bloody Mindfulness
‘The only person that could threaten my creativity is me’ Gee Vaucher
There’s no time limit on nonconformity. Talking to Tim Pope, his love for punk and where he has found himself over time, brings a reminder that the most compelling work is that which has a fundamental truth to it – something that relates, resonates and reverberates throughout a culture. Tim Pope asks for simplicity:
‘I think if you are true to yourself and don’t look over your shoulder, just do what you want to do, which is very hard to do these days, but if you know what is true within yourself, it will reach a truth with an audience. There are essential truths.’
It’s not just about simplicity in essential truths, Tim Pope invites us in for a healthy drop of anarchy:
‘I think a lot of my early work, specifically, I wanted to create as much trouble as I could. There’s a big part of me that wants to, is fairly anarchic, or wants to be’
You want to ‘mess stuff up’, Tim?
‘Not really, I like flying close to the edge, I think it’s a very exhilarating place to be, at many levels, I mean, you know, my first year of making videos I made this first one with Soft Cell called Pleasures and I was making a film for a song entitled Sex Dwarf. I made the video and it was basically ‘a vertically challenged person’ and a pile of meat and some hookers from out of Soho, loads of milk and me turning up the music really loud…’
There’s a certain amount of ‘naughtiness’ associated with nonconformity. It’s not easy. Nonconformity can have a dark side. When we challenge ourselves to create there can be a nagging feeling that we can lose the plot at any given moment. This self-doubt affects us all as Gee Vaucher illustrates:
‘The only person that could threaten my creativity is me. There have been periods where I think ‘oh shit I’ve lost it, I can’t think of anything’ but that’s because I’m trying to think too hard so I have to get rid of all that and just get on it.’
What does the way we conduct our art education bring to bear on the subject? Education, often by simply nothing more than bureaucratic necessity, pigeonholes subject matter. This approach is arguably outmoded in a cross-disciplinary world where use of skills, media and materials can be applied across traditional boundaries: Fine artists don’t just paint and sculpt, graphic designers increasingly work on self-initiated projects, musicians make films, perhaps we should embrace the homogenisation of the arts, or is homogenisation the enemy of the non-conformist? Mike Perry sticks two fingers up at the idea of ‘jack of all trades master of none’. When it comes to the core facet of creativity – having ‘ideas’ he explains his stance towards his time at college as this:
‘I did the opposite technique to what all my art teachers said, which was ‘get really good at one thing and become known for that one thing’ to me that seemed really boring, I want to be known as someone who has ideas, that’s allowed me to try things.’
But it’s not just the upstarts that bring the noise to homogenisation of the arts. Long-time educator Ken Garland reminds us that it’s not just the fickle youth that feels boxed in when he says:
‘I’ve never tried to pull all the threads together, I love doing something that is totally different to doing what I was doing yesterday and I like that variety immensely. As to cohesion? I suppose there must be, the cohesion is that you are one person and you have one mind, it’s as simple as that.’
And perhaps it really is as simple as that. This ‘one love’ across many fields, with endless forays into the unknown is what makes it all so very exciting and nerve-wracking. Ken Garland is a prime example of someone who continues to battle, converse and convince us of the plight and use of creativity. Ken’s First Things First manifesto, which he co-wrote in 1963 and published in 1964, called on us to look beyond capitalism as the overarching vehicle for our talents. Ken’s view that creativity is more useful than its mere ability to sell dog food is a worthy one. The call to refuse to conform to political or social pressure, that there are alternative outlets for creativity, that do not compromise your beliefs, is worth bearing in mind in an age where we are seemingly faced with a myriad of possibilities, but where, in fact, we often operate in a hall of mirrors.
Nonconformity Under Pressure: A Rallying Battle Cry
‘You don’t need any validation to do what you want to do…’ Doug Abraham
Many amongst us feel that creativity is a young person’s business – If you haven’t ‘made it’ by the age of 25 then it’s game over: You may as well give up. Of course, some industries have traditionally thrived on youth, we take more kindly to the traumas of teenage kicks then the balding ‘dad-isms’ of our elders. Music and fashion in particular fall foul of ageism, but graphic design and the wider arts also fall foul. Culture is fashion and fashion is fickle. Why should we see struggle as a struggle? What happens when you become you and no one else likes you? Let’s lay this one to rest: There is an audience out there for you, it’s just a matter of finding it, creating and nurturing it. You are not alone.
Looking forward to the other chapters in this book, Erik Kessels is keen to point out that he considers nonconformity to be the tread that runs through creativity:
‘Money and power, fame and fulfilment, maybe they are something I treat in my own way, these topics could be seen as very negative, because I think that when I really reach for those kind of things I would have made different choices. I think nonconformity is the most important thing in all of this, because that is something you need when you do creative work, however you do it, if you do it very tangibly or not, you need to do your own thing.’
So, is nonconformity some sort of magic from within and what pressures do we place on nonconformity? Erik Kessels:
‘No it’s very hard work, of course, you need to work hard for that to keep being non-conformist, you can lose it, the hardest part is to stay like that, for instance, up till now, the most difficult thing about the job, anything to do with creative work is when to say yes and when to say no, that’s the most important thing, I’ve meant to say no and I’ve said yes… That happens, the most difficult thing is to say no.’
Let’s end this chapter with this rallying battle cry from Doug Abraham:
‘You don’t need any validation to do what you want to do, conventional thinking is the dangerous dogma of our time, don’t go to school because you think it’s going to get you a job, or that you are going to have a future later if you do this now: Your future is now.’